Taylor Lessard

He beheld her, in that mansion

which is the white sepulcher of itself: her mazy

                liver-spotted face, her hands’ mockery

                                   of hands, which made his—nimble, cultivated—

                                   play with themselves as if reassuringly; and

a smile, he couldn’t help it, a smile which would have been piteous

were it not also motivated by a pleasure in profit,



                 slit his face—



 that such a creature, broken-

backed with the burden of its pride

                 and reeking of desire-sickness, that such a creature so

      self-deceived, to think

her grotesque pallor that of divine indifference,

and her small black eyes the vortices of love,

                should be beheld at all, that she shouldn’t vanish into her own

unreality;







                 and he—painting her! who had fooled

the birds with his delicious de-incarnation, he

                 masking her unreality with extravagant mercies

so as to make her real,

and that his labor: to turn a woman sweet-sickeningly dreaming of herself

                 into pure coherent light. He chuckled, 



                                  as though enjoying the work very much; she blushed to be looked upon

and smiled at,

and was so much the more revolting to behold



The essence of ugliness is labored ignorance.



And so how ugly was he,

he thought as he beheld himself in her blush and her maze:



 



                 overcome with sorrow,

                 he was revolutionized by laughter.